Fate
by believeinthegods
Summary: 'I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.' Sometimes, she really hates being the Oracle. rachel/percy -  percy/annabeth.


**fate.**

_~inspired by Mal in Inception. have patience - click is coming. I'm finding love in words again. percy/rachel/annabeth~_

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_'I know I am but summer to your heart,_  
_And not the full four seasons of the year.'_

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Her fate is such a bitch.

It's like a slap in the face. A slap in the face, with a flair for _irony_. And yeah, she gets that it's her destiny and a gift and an _honour _and everything; she knows that when she gets the hell out of Clarion Ladies Academy, she's going to meet some really cool people and the pad Apollo has planned for her sounds pretty amazing...

It's just sometimes, she really _hates _being the Oracle.

There's one thing in particularly that, frankly, really pisses her off more than anything, like someone up _there_ managed to crack into her own little Inception-style dream safe and pluck out her biggest vulnerability, only for them to use it to torture her endlessly at inopportune intervals.

It first strikes at eleven, one drizzly Tuesday night.

She's lying in her dorm room bed; the only sound breaking the sleepy silence is the dull hum of the bass and drums emanating softly from one of her dorm-mates' iPods.

The dream – is it a dream if it's painfully real? - begins as it always does – steady darkening of vision to eery blackness, a swirling feeling of dizziness and a strange prickling sensation at her fingertips that she guesses might be some sort of power surge or maybe not.

And then it takes a turn for the worse.

The room she sees is dimly lit, so it takes her a second or two to make out (oh, the _irony_) the shapes of the two figures.

And, too late, she realises exactly what it is she's seeing.

Annabeth's underneath, her blonde curls splayed across the pillows, slim body curved at the waist, pressed to against Percy's muscular frame – her hand slides slowly underneath the white fabric of his shirt; their kisses hot and fevered. Percy's fingers wander to the small of her back as his mouth dips to her neck, and there's a shaky, breathy sort of sound Annabeth makes that's vulnerable and alluring all at once.

Oh, _gods – _

She makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat of shock and revulsion.

"Rachel?" One of her dorm-mates says warily. "Are you... okay?"

The vision is gone, gone as quickly as it came, but it lingers in her mind's eye and no amount of shaking her head like she's having an epileptic fit is going to change that.

"Maybe she's having a panic attack," another girl mumbles nervously. "Should we call 911?"

It's the _worst, _the worst _possible _feeling.

She jerks upwards, standing quickly and racing for the door, muttering something about air.

It's _Percy_ and it's _Annabeth_, and it's _Percy and Annabeth together – _

She picks the lock on the dormitory door easily (years worth of practice breaking into her dad's offices to steal paper and pencils comes in handy sometimes) and throws herself out into the night.

She's absolutely mortified. Like completely, utterly, throw yourself off a cliff and end up in tiny squidgy pieces mortified. She feels like such a traitor, more than anything. What she saw was deadly private; intimate and so totally not her business – the noise is still ringing in her ears and she stamps her feet, trying to drown it out.

When she returns to her dorm, half an hour later, she's shaky and on-edge and she knows, _she knows_, if anyone tries to hug her she's going to cry.

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She dreams of Percy's body pressed to hers and his lips at _her_ neck and her moan cutting through the night.

She wakes at four am and buries her tears in her pillow, wallowing in loathsome self-pity.

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And that's just the beginning. They keep on _coming_.

They're sporadic, which she guesses is some form of a blessing, but they're still in her life, which is the thing she has the problem with.

The ones that really throw her are the ones that are just so breathtakingly personal. Like when she sees them watching a movie with her head resting gently on his lap, and when she starts to get tired his fingers toy with the ends of her curls absently, like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Or when they're walking with friends and she catches his hand in hers, all the while listening and laughing along with the others; just a simple gesture of closeness between them for only them (and Rachel) to see.

Or when they're at the movies, and Percy leans in to whisper something in her ear that makes Annabeth grin to herself as Percy steals some popcorn, and whenever Grover or someone asks for the joke they both shake their heads and dismiss it as nothing, nothing at all.

The visions are pointless, she _knows _this. There's no prophecy, no big prediction for the future or the fate of the world that comes from them. They're just moments of someone else's life woven clumsily into hers, and she wants the person who's responsible for them to fall into a pit and die.

It hurts. It hurts every time.

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And the guilt. The guilt is just the icing on the god damn cake.

She's not guilty that she's seeing the stupid visions.

She's not guilty that she curses Annabeth and Percy's names from dawn until dusk _because_ of the stupid visions.

She's not even guilty that she's invading their privacy like this, even though she knows Annabeth, who keeps her relationship with Percy fiercely private (we're talking password locks on her phone inbox, un-hackable e-mail and photo album passwords, refusal to discuss the matter unless with the closest of friends, and serious punishment for anyone who dares make some lude, sexually explicit comment about the pair of them) would be beyond horrified if she knew anyone had this exclusive look-in to one of her best guarded secrets. Especially if that someone was Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

The thing she's most guilty about is something she will never, ever, _ever _admit to _anyone_.

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She's spent a year trying to tell herself, over and over, that her feelings for Percy were just destiny and her calling drawing her to him, and nothing more.

But she knows the truth.

The truth (whisper it);

She wants him to kiss _her_ like that. She wants his hands in _her _hair, his hand in _hers, _his jokes whispered in _her _ear. She wants him to look at her like he looks at Annabeth.

She wants – needs, prays for – him to feel for her the thing he feels for Annabeth.

She loves Annabeth, and she loves that she's happy with Percy, because she deserves it and they're _perfect perfect achingly perfect together. _She loves Annabeth dearly (but, if anything, that makes the guilt worse).

She's guilty because she knows, deep-down, that these visions are of her own making. She can scream at Olympus all she wants – they know the truth, who is behind these infrequent, torturous daydreams. She knows herself well enough to know that this is her subconscious, calling out for him, longing for him so ardently, so painfully, and her Oracle-senses stepping in to remind her of the truth, the practicalities of her own existence. It's her own destiny – her own chaste, celibate destiny – reminding her of what cannot be.

_He's Annabeth's. He's Annabeth's, and destiny dictates. He can never, will never, be mine. _

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It's true. Fate is a bitch.

_Story of my life. _

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**quote ~** **Edna St. Vincent Millay. **_


End file.
